Activision Blizzard, once the most valuable video company in the United States has fallen from its throne and Roblox has taken its place.
Activision Blizzard rose to prominence with the likes of Diablo, World of Warcraft, Overwatch, Hearthstone, and the Call of Duty Franchise, but has since been surpassed by Roblox.
The company is currently in the midst of a workplace harassment controversy and was slapped with a lawsuit by the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing after a two-year investigation detailing a hostile work environment, as well as a host of abuses such as denying promotion to female staffers and male employees making sexually inappropriate remarks about their coworkers.
The controversy has been largely covered in detail by the New York Times.
Activision Blizzard landed in more trouble when the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that the company was under investigation for its handling of workplace sexual harassment and other discrimination issues, the Wall Street Journal reported in September.
Earlier this week, Roblox, which creates the video game of the same name, surpassed Activision Blizzard following a surge in its stock price.
GameSpot reports that Roblox only started trading in March when it went public, and the company does not develop games itself, instead, Roblox operates the platform for other developers to create games. In contrast, Activision Blizzard is a traditional video game company that publishes, develops, markets, and distributes games.
The Wall Street Journal’s Sarah Needleman reported that shares of Roblox jumped over 40 percent on Tuesday after the company released its earnings report. The firm’s market cap surpassed $62 billion, which is $10 billion more than Activision Blizzard’s market cap of $52 billion. EA Games holds the third-place position with $39.7 billion.
As GameTalon reported earlier this month, Blizzard’s two most highly anticipated titles, Diablo 4 and Overwatch 2 were pushed back by at least a year, and will not be released until 2023 at the earliest.
